try to shine brighter
by fluggerbutter
Summary: He is not worth the boondollars in his bank, but this girl, her selflessness defines her; sets her light years apart from the likes of himself and the trillions of self-pitying egotists scattered across time and space.


_i wrote this a long, long, lonnng time ago and have since forgotten the context, but i think it was meant to fit into canon /somewhere./ i love the strider-lalondes so much too much especially these two someone take them away from me_

* * *

The girl sounds like Rose and her lipstick is the colour of Rose's and her hair shines silver in the moonlight just like Rose's does, but she is not Rose, and her eyes are pale pink instead of the purple that pierces his soul. They gaze upon him softly, with foreign affection.

"Hey, little Strider," she says, sitting cross-legged beside him.

"Hi," he says.

"What'cha doin' out here? All lonsesome and angsty and such."

"Being lonesome and angsty," he answers, "And such."

"Why?"

"Because," he says, and his thoughts finish for him. Because I am of a race that is extinct. Because the best friend I haven't seen in years has gone grimdark. Because four years ago I wouldn't have known what that even meant; because four years ago everything was okay, and now it is not. Because I could have become a paleontologist. Instead of what I became.

"Oh," she says, and he feels like she listened to all his silent reasons, even if she couldn't hear them.

"Yeah. Your session only started this year, didn't it?" he asks, clasping his knees tighter to his chest.

"Yeah."

He looks up at her, takes her in full. Her hair is a tumultuous mass of golden flyaway strands and her hands are covered in scratches; there are darkening circles beneath her eyes, but in the curl of her fingers and flush of her cheeks there is real happiness, real love. She must have had a good life before this one.

"Our fourth anniversary was just a couple days ago."

"Well. That must be suckish."

His smile is weak but sincere. "Real suckish."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too."

"I must say, my bro, you throw one hell of a pity party."

He laughs. "Thanks."

She smiles, then leans back on her palms, looks up at the clouded sky. "Y'know, I used to have these all the time. Sittin' alone, in my room. Starin' at nothin'."

"You?" His attention is caught now, his eyes on this stranger, this angel, but he realises that his surprise is unfounded. Of course she would have had a miserable existence. She's part of this game, isn't she? Why would he have expected anything more?

He answers his question almost before it is asked: Because she deserves it. Something more. He has known her all for two minutes and he knows she deserves it.

"Man," she says, "I was one of the last of my species. Final female, livin' it up, no parental supervision or nothin'. Maybe I woulda had a blast if I'd had a real life friend. But nope. Only two ghosts and a Texan. Yessiree, sixteen years without human company, that's the life."

His chest hurts.

"So what stopped you?" he says. "From being sad."

"Well, for one, a huge buttload of alcohol. And secondly, y'know, I realised that they were enough. My ghosts and my long-distance guy. What would I do without 'em? Become an old drunk spinster cat lady probably, with a jacked-up liver. That's what I would do. But I don't have to be without 'em. They're my best friends. And my life, which let's admit didn't have much lifey-ness, became their lives. All my life now is making their lives better."

She pauses, thinking.

"Except right now it's all kinda screwed up and I still gotta fix it. I gotta fix us. Because it fixes me. D'you get it, little Strider?"

"Sort of," he says.

"Good," she says, "Because I don't." She giggles, a low, sweet sound that does not fit the words she has just uttered, and in that brief moment he doesn't know what to make of her.

"Does it really make it better?" he asks. "Does fixing them really fix you?"

"Yeah. It does."

He keeps his eyes fixed upon her and eventually she drops her head with a quiet sigh, her weariness evidencing itself.

"Okay, so no. It doesn't, really. After all's said and done and patched up, I'm still miserable as hell. But y'know what?" She looks up and her gaze locks his. "I can live with that. If they're all right, I can live with that."

His heart breaks for her, then. And the pain of it burns more than his own grief does. He is not worth the boondollars in his bank, but this girl, her selflessness defines her; sets her light years apart from the likes of himself and the trillions of self-pitying egotists scattered across time and space. She is spun, like fairy floss, of goodness – void of all the flaws that come from the core of vanity that lies within the rest of the universe.

She laughs a broken laugh. Broken, but not bitter.

"I'm sorry, bro. I don't even know why I'm telling you this. Must be the withdrawal kickin' in."

It's okay, he thinks, but out of his mouth spills another inquiry.

"Why don't you get better when they do?"

Abruptly, she falls into silence.

He waits. They watch faint fogged-up stars try to shine brighter.

After a long, long while, she says, "I loved someone very much. Too much."

He tries to think of something to say to this but she takes his taciturnity as request for further explanation.

"So, so much, little Strider; I loved him so much. Imagine one of those stars exploding for a sec." She reaches her hands up, fingers splayed against the starlit sky; a detonation. "All supernova'd up and shiz. Enormous and bright and flaming and whatnot. Imagine how much it must hurt being caught in a blast like that, in the one moment before you're burnt to a crisp and dead and gone forever."

He looks up. His own pain over these past four years, magnified a hundred times, a thousand. "I'm imagining."

Her arms drop down to her sides, her voice softens. "That's how much it hurts," she says, in the present tense, "Loving him."

The silence is sudden and full.

"I'm older than you," he says at last. In reference to the nickname she was so quick to give him.

By this time she has pulled her knees up to her chin, and she hugs her legs, places her head on them sideways so that she's looking up at him.

"I know. You're like, alternate-dimension Dirk's big bro. Except, it doesn't feel like it. Feels like you're still small."

He thinks.

"Probably because I grew up kinda screwed."

"You kinda did."

He nudges her playfully, his shoulder against hers: their first contact, soft and familiar. "So did you."

She laughs. He's surprised again at how pure it is of resentment. Real and bright, like the light in her cotton candy eyes.

"Man, I like you," she says, as she stares at the stars. "Little Strider."

And the silence returns, this time hanging in the air like an old friend, making itself comfortable between them.


End file.
